


A Loaded Smile

by debwalsh



Series: Take Up Your Shield and Follow Me [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death, Death Threats, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Torture, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 16:43:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2236164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debwalsh/pseuds/debwalsh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Buchanan Barnes visits Brock Rumlow in the hospital.   Hydra isn’t coming for Rumlow.  James Buchanan Barnes has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Loaded Smile

**Author's Note:**

> A warning that this is not a story for Rumbuck fans. Relationship with Steve Rogers is implied but Steve doesn't appear in this story, which is part of the larger arc of Take Up Your Shield and Follow Me. There are more stories to come in this series, including Bucky's partial recovery before this story, and his reunion with Steve Rogers to come. 
> 
> At this time, Bucky is still piecing himself together, still operating on his own, still removing the pieces of Hydra that exist in the Washington, DC area. Brock Rumlow is another piece of Hydra to be dealt with. It does not end well for Brock Rumlow.

“Just an hour, sweetie. We have rules here in ICU, you know,” the older nurse instructed kindly.

“Oh, thank you!” a light baritone voice replied enthusiastically. “I promise I’ll make that hour _count_ ,” the young man simpered.

The nurse made approving noises and slipped back out of the room, the door snicking closed behind her.

Brock Rumlow huffed a searing breath but didn’t move as the stranger slipped quietly into his hospital room and settled in the plastic visitor’s chair. It creaked slightly with the weight, and then the only sounds in the room resolved to the steady thunk of the oxygen concentrator, the beep of the EKG, the painful rasp of Rumlow’s own breathing.

Rumlow laid still in his hospital bed, since any kind of movement set his nerve endings on fire again, and the painkillers they had dripping into his arm via IV barely kept the pain at bay as it was. They’d told him he had second degree burns over 90 per cent of his body, and that pain was going to be something he’d know intimately for a long time to come. They’d used nicer, more weaselly words, but the upshot was the same. He was fucked up pretty bad, and it would be a long time before he’d get out of here.

Unless Hydra pulled him out and gave him a taste of some of their advanced medicine, stuff tested without FDA approval. So he was happy to have a visitor that he knew wasn’t bringing fucking flowers.

Finally, Rumlow cracked open an eye, registered the face of the figure crouching in the chair, and let his eye drift closed again with a muttered curse.

“Wondered when somebody was gonna spring me. Goddamned public health don’t hold a candle to Hydra’s health plan, know what I mean? Been waiting on extraction. Didn’t expect you, fuckin’ dumbass. You don’t normally do undercover.”

The Winter Soldier, the fucking Asset, didn’t reply. What bonehead figured this fuck was the right _man_ for the job? No fucking way this fuck was even a man now, if it had ever been. Just a fucking robot with good aim and a tight ass worth fucking.

A soft sound of movement then, a rustle of cloth, and then silence again, stretching, waiting. It stood by the IV leading into his left arm, looking down at him with a blank expression.

 _Waiting for orders._ Fuck it. He’d have words with whatever bean counter sent the Asset on mission without priming it. You don’t send a weapon to make an extraction. You sent a weapon to kill. Stupid fucks. Words and _more_.

Well, it was here now, and it could still be useful. He just had to figure out the right sequence of commands to get it to do what he needed. His eyes drifted closed again while he concentrated on what to say.

“Mission status?” he demanded, croaked out, irritably. It was a start.

“Mission nearing completion. Target acquired,” the Asset replied softly. Rumlow felt the cold slick of the Asset’s prosthetic left hand touch his forehead, metal fingers sliding across his ravaged skin. Gentle, like a lover’s touch. Creepy as fuck.

“What the fuck!” Rumlow swore, eyes snapping open again, unencumbered hand striking out to grasp the mechanical hand. The Asset caught his hand around the wrist with its flesh hand and held it, canting its head sideways to look at Rumlow appraisingly. It smiled. It _fucking_ _smiled_.

The smile didn’t reach its eyes, but he wouldn’t expect it to. It was enough of a shock to see a smile on that face. But it looked directly into his eyes, like it had a will of its own. And Rumlow felt his insides twist. What looked back at him wasn’t the diamond focus of a killing machine, the Asset. The “Winter Soldier” some called him in their poetic, paranoid fantasies. 

“Identify target,” he ordered, his voice barely there as his eyes remained fixed on the Asset’s strangely focused blue eyes. Why had he never noticed they were blue?

“Brock Rumlow. Hydra sick fuck,” the lips of the Asset replied softly, and curled back into a smile that crinkled around his eyes, ghosting a kiss across the pulse point in Rumlow’s wrist. Rumlow tried to jerk his hand, his arm out of its grasp, but it just held on, tightening its hold.

Ice spread up through his extremities, aiming for his heart. His throat constricted, and he barely got the words out to ask, “Who are you?”

The Asset fucking grinned then, dropping Rumlow’s hand as though it had lost interest. “Let me introduce myself. James Buchanan Barnes, Sergeant, US Army. 32557038. Master sniper, assigned to the 107th. I’ve been a prisoner of war for a very long time. _And I remember you_.”

“Yeah, I was part of your tac team, ground support. We go way back,” Rumlow replied, trying to put a friendly note into his broken voice. Very little frightened Brock Rumlow, but the reasonable tone of the Asset’s – no, _Barnes’s_ voice as he stared at Brock like he was a bug on his shoe unnerved him to his core. He could feel the unfamiliar bile of fear rising in his throat, trembling through his skin.

“Way back,” Barnes repeated, looking off to the side, and taking a deep breath. He shook his head. “Tac support’s changed since my day, Rumlow. Don’t remember having to take it up the ass to get somebody to carry my guns. Deep throating or facials, neither. But you and your men, you had your fun.” Those brilliant blue eyes were focused on him now, cold like the Asset’s, but Rumlow could sense the heat of anger beneath the cold. Like dry ice, so cold it burns.

“They told us you weren’t human anymore, couldn’t feel anything, wouldn’t remember –“

“They also told you I couldn’t be out of the ice without a wipe for more than a day or two. Never asked why?”

“Above my pay grade.”

“Because it grew back. My brain. And everything Hydra did to me started to fall away. Because I remember. I remember _everything_. Every _fucking_ thing. And the only thing that wasn’t human was you and your fucking animals, Rumlow. You and everything fucking Hydra.” 

The Asset – no, Barnes, for fuck’s sake, this wasn’t the mindless Asset anymore, this was a pissed off guy with a fucking bionic arm and a grudge for fuck’s sake – drew its - _his_ metal index finger down Brock’s face, a bitter smile on his young face. Brock had never really noticed before how young the Asset really was – barely more than a kid by the look of him. He felt his lip – the part that wasn’t burned and hurting – curl in a sneer. “They’ll take you back. They’ll find you –“

“Ripped the trackers out myself. Crushed ‘em. From the … thing, the arm, and my skin.” He waggled the metal fingers in a parody of hello. “Skin grew back, never know how deep I had to dig to find those goddamned tracker chips. Arm’s kinda hinky now – I might have pulled something important when I was groping around inside. But it’s still functional enough.” His finger was still travelling down Brock’s body, pausing to dig into ruined flesh, lingering almost lovingly. “Maybe I need a new souvenir,” it – _he_ said softly. The humanness of Barnes was unnerving after years of serving with the cold, empty precision of the Asset. The Asset had never complained, never fought back, never did anything but take what was done to it, right up until that day on the bridge, against … against Cap.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Rumlow breathed softly, incredulously.

Barnes tilted his head again, a half smile on his lips. Soft lips, clean skin, no trace of camouflage smudging beneath the eyes, hair cut and washed. Shaved and groomed, well dressed, even. He could be a college student or a clerk at the Supreme Court. No one would ever mistake that face for a mindless assassin, a weapon that only needed to be pointed in the right direction. A face he’d seen in that stupid exhibit at the Smithsonian. He’d never made the connection, it was too fucking far-fetched. 

Yeah, in a world where a man dead a generation wrote a computer algorithm that targeted fucking flying aircraft carriers at millions of people. And a man out of time brought down the whole fucking mess with a fucking disc of metal.

How’s your life doing, today, Brock? Fucked to hell and gone.

_Heil fucking Hydra._

“That’s me.”

“Cap’s friend, the one who –“

“Died. Yeah, still me. I _died_. I remember dying, I remember bleeding out in the snow, freezing. Made my peace with the world, was ready for the angels or the devils, whichever wanted to claim me. Musta been found by a Hydra search party sometime later. After I died. So, Hell for me.”

“That was fucking 1945! How could you be –“

“Here? Alive? Still good-lookin’? ‘Cept for this goddamned thing,” he nodded toward the prosthetic. “Your hero, Zola. Sick fuck to end all sick fucks. Sounds like a good idea, actually, ending sick fucks,” he added, the metal hand finally stopping right over Brock’s crotch. “Said I needed a new souvenir – broke all the trackers. Got nothin’ left from Hydra to remember them by, ‘cept for this fucking thing,” he explained, flexing the metal fingers around Brock’s cock. Brock stiffened at the contact, reflexively tried to sink further into the bed to retreat from those unforgiving digits. Barnes looked directly at Brock, eyes intense and focused like to bore right through Brock’s brain. “You liked it when I sucked you off, when the Asset took you down. Maybe I should just bite it off and stuff it in my pocket, display it on my mantle, hmmm?” The hand bore down again on Brock’s cock, squeezing mercilessly. Brock swallowed a scream, huffed a muffled grunt of pain, staring into Barnes’s eyes. “How’s that feel, huh?”

The hand closed further, servos whirring, and tears pricked at the corners of Brock’s eyes. Goddamnit, Barnes was gonna break his dick, he was gonna snap it clean off. A strangled noise bubbled up Brock’s throat, against his will, against his better judgment. The fucking thing was getting hard in Barnes’s grip, and Barnes’s eyes widened at the same time Brock’s squeezed shut.

“You sick fuck. I tell you I’m gonna bite the damned thing off, and you’re _hard_ for it? What the hell’s wrong with you, man? Don’t you know how to be scared when someone’s threatening to kill you by amputatin’ your _dick_?”

“I ain’t afraid of you. Hydra –“

“Is dying. Offensives all over the globe. Ain’t you been watchin’ the news? And I’ve personally dismantled every Hydra facility in the DC area. Not that there were many left – most operatives hightailed it out of town when Shield fell and Widow uploaded everybody’s nasty little secrets to the internet. No fuckin’ loyalty. Then again, Hydra didn’t have much of a retirement plan, did it? Hail fuckin’ Hydra.”

“What?”

“Hmm. There’s no one comin’ to extract you, Rumlow. Your team is dead. Your superiors are dead or on the run. You got no support, ground or air. Intelligence community is eating its young trying to rout out Hydra. You’re on your own. Feelin’ a little less perky now?” Barnes paused a moment, drew his flesh finger down the side of Rumlow’s face slowly, agonizingly. The ruined flesh of Rumlow’s face felt flayed and exposed, pain sparking along every inch, a wave of sensation so intense it threatened to drive Brock into the dark. 

“Nurse thinks we’re lovers. Gave her a line so she’d let me sit with you a while. ‘My poor baby, I just know he’ll get better faster if only I could hold his hand’,” he added in a higher pitched voice. “If only she knew,” Barnes whispered darkly, an abrupt change in tone that chilled Brock the length of his damaged body. Barnes dropped his face close to Brock’s, holding his lips close to Brock’s ear, hot breath moist on his skin. “Death is your lover. Waitin’ to hold you close. Don’t wanna keep it waitin’ too long.” 

Barnes licked his face from jaw to temple. Then he captured Brock’s chin brutally in his fingers and turned his face toward his, licked across his lips and forced his tongue into Brock’s mouth, tongue-fucking him roughly, probing his mouth like he was aiming for his tonsils. Then just as abruptly, he withdrew, staring down at Rumlow for a long moment, running his tongue over his own teeth while Rumlow spat out the taste of Barnes’s mouth.

“What the fuck, man?”

“Right top rear molar. Lighter composite, intended to break on impact at the correct angle.” Barnes smacked his lips and grinned ferally. “Every Hydra agent has a way out. It’s more than you deserve, more than you ever gave me. More than you ever gave anyone. You tried to hurt Steve, tried to make me kill him. You deserve to suffer, deserve to have your skin crisp up and fall off and leave you flayed for eternity.” The smile fell away, leaving only weariness in its wake. “But I want it done. Don’t you? Don’t you want it to be over?” he whispered, almost gently, his metal fingers stroking the raw flesh of Rumlow’s cheek.

“I –“

“One hard bite down, and all the pain goes away,” Barnes continued softly. “No more ruined flesh. No more broken bones. No agonizing months of physical therapy and skin treatments. No years of infirmity, of depending on others to get around with your broken body. No aches and pains and decay with age. Wouldn’t you like that?” he asked, brushing his lips across Rumlow’s cheek, nose, forehead. He pressed his cheek against Rumlow’s and rubbed the damaged skin with his stubble, his lips moving against the shell of his ear, prompting a wave of nausea from the pain triggered by contact with his fractured skin. “Let go, Rumlow. It’d be so easy.” 

“Think you can convince me to commit suicide, kid? Think you can con me into giving up?” Rumlow grated with bravado he didn’t feel. 

“I think you already have,” Barnes breathed, voice so soft Rumlow had to strain to hear it, even with Barnes’s lips touching his ear. “You just have to finish it.”

Tears leaked out the corners of Rumlow’s eyes, tears of pain as Barnes’s stubbled jaw ground into the flayed open flesh of his face. Tears of anger that Barnes had found him so vulnerable. The way Barnes pressed his face against Rumlow’s was weirdly intimate, both gentle and brutal at the same time. There was no tenderness to the act. There’d been no tenderness in anything Rumlow had done to the Asset, either.

“Hydra is dying. I destroyed the chair. I destroyed everything in the vault. I’ve torched all the safe houses in the area, taken all the caches. It’s all gone. There’s nothing left. Just oblivion. It can be yours, you just have to allow yourself to take it.”

“Fuck you,” Rumlow snarled and Barnes suddenly lifted his face away, staring down at him with eyes gone dead and cold.

“You already did. It _wasn’t_ good for me.” He reached out to stroke Rumlow’s cheek again, his touch absurdly gentle, in conflict with the cold anger in his eyes. “Last chance.”

“Or what? That nurse saw your face.”

“That nurse’ll see my face again when I weep into her arms mourning my suicidal lover. You just couldn’t go on, the damage to your body was just too devastating. It’ll be revealed you were a member of SHIELD, maybe even a member of Hydra. The shame was too much. Or maybe they just won’t notice the poison, maybe they’ll think you were just too weak to deal with the pain, and your heart up and stopped. No difference for me – I’m still the mourning partner, so broken up to lose you. She’ll understand and she’ll comfort me, and I’ll cling to her like she’s the only thing keeping me sane. Do you think I’m sane, Rumlow? Do you think 70 years of freezing and cutting into my brain while I’m conscious and torture and abuse and using me like a fucking weapon to dole out death has left me sane? Hmm?”

“I don’t give a flying fuck.”

“Wrong answer.” And with that, Barnes simply tapped his metal index finger against Rumlow’s right cheek at an oblique angle, and Rumlow felt the hollow tooth disintegrate as though he’d bitten down on it. His eyes widened as a burning, acrid flavor flooded over his tongue, followed by a wave of numbness. Immediately, he could feel the tightness of not enough air, instinctively gasping to draw more in to feed tissue that was already starving for it as the cyanide shut down his ability to absorb oxygen. His body started to tremble, growing more violent as the first seizure wracked his body.

Barnes reached out and closed his hands over Rumlow’s biceps, saying, “Darling, what’s wrong?” But his expression was flat as he observed the rapid-fire changes in Rumlow’s body, and as Rumlow’s eyes rolled back in his head, he realized that Barnes was counting down the seconds to ensure that no antidote could be given.

A soft voice saying gently, “I’d say see you in Hell, but been there, done that,” was the last thing Brock Rumlow heard before his awareness narrowed down to a single point and then nothing.

***

The scenario played out exactly as James Buchanan Barnes predicted, and the nurse consoled him as best she could, pulling him out of the room while the doctors worked the crash cart on the flatlined Rumlow, finally calling time of death a few minutes later. The burns over Rumlow’s body hid the telltale reddening of his skin from the cyanide. There was no bitter almonds scent to this grade of cyanide, and not everyone would have noticed it anyway, since detection was genetically based. And death by cyanide was so fanciful, left to the likes of Bond films and revisionist WWII history on film. No one suspected poison in those first few critical moments, and no one would look for it later. Everyone thought it was a mercy for the man so horrifically burned and broken, and assumed that his heart had given out at last. With no next of kin to demand an autopsy, no toxicology panel would be run, and no one would ever know how Brock Rumlow really died.

The nurse drew him into the nurses’ lounge, plied him with coffee, a compassionate hug, and soft murmurs of “you poor baby,” and “I’m so sorry.” A few minutes later, she had to leave to address another patient emergency elsewhere on the floor, and James Buchanan Barnes slipped away. The body would be moved to the morgue, where it would go unclaimed, but the nurse wouldn’t know that because she’d be busy with her living patients, and that poor boy who lost his lover so tragically would recede quickly from her memory.

And Hydra had lost another head, and there wouldn’t another to grow in its place.

Mission objective: Eliminate Rumlow.  
Mission status: Successful.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on vacation this week, and I hope to get more of the series finished and posted. I'm especially hoping to finish up "All Along the Watchtower," the story that comes before this in sequence, and details Bucky's initial recovery.
> 
> For more the chronology of Take Up Your Shield and Follow Me, see my post on Tumblr at <http://debwalsh.tumblr.com/post/96342687147/take-up-your-shield-and-follow-me-chronology-my-steve>.
> 
> And visit me on Tumblr at [http://debwalsh.tumblr.com](http://debwalsh.tumbler.com)!


End file.
